Control valves are commonly used in process plants to control the flow of a fluid (e.g., a gas, a liquid, etc.) or any other substance through pipes and/or vessels to which they are connected. A control valve is typically composed of one or more inlets and outlets, and includes a flow control element or member (e.g., a valve gate, a piston, a valve plug, a closure member, etc.) that operates to control fluid flow through apertures that fluidly couple the inlet(s) to the outlet(s). A closure member is typically coupled to a valve bonnet that is mechanically coupled (e.g., bolted, clamped, threaded into, etc.) to the valve body. Typically, the closure member is configured to engage a sealing structure (e.g., a seat ring) that encompasses a flow path through the valve.
In practice, some process plants, in addition to control valves, include a safety shut-off valve (e.g., an emergency shut-off valve) positioned upstream or downstream from each of the control valves to quickly stop the flow of fluid in response to, for example, a system failure. While these safety shut-off valves provide many benefits to a fluid control process in some instances, the additional space and system length (e.g., pipe run lengths) required to incorporate the safety shut-off valves pose some challenges in designing a process plant, particularly in cases where available space is very limited.
In the past, many fluid control processes were designed without safety shut-off valves. However, there is a demand to update these processes with safety shut-off valves (e.g., safety integrated system hardware (SIS)) to ensure that system failures are properly contained. To do so, existing piping may have to be cut and/or re-routed to accommodate the additional space required by the safety shut-off valves. Alternatively, when designing new fluid processes, designers may have limited space in which to implement the safety shut-off valves and, thus, to do so, it may be difficult or impossible to position these safety shut-off valves within the fluid control process.